PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 399 



violent change, than for a worker bee, which may be regarded as a sterile 

 female, in consequence of a certain process, to assume the secondary 

 characters of a fertile female. 



With respect to the variations of instinct and character which result 

 from the different modes of training the young bees that we are now 

 considering, it would not, I think, be difficult to prove that causes at 

 first sight equally inadequate have produced effects fully as important on 

 the habits, tempers, and characters of men and other animals ; but as these 

 will readily occur to you, I shall not now enlarge upon them. 



Did we know the causes of the various deviations, as to form and the 

 like, observable in the three kingdoms of nature, and could apply them, 

 we should be able to produce these deviations at our pleasure. This is 

 exactly what the bees do. Their instinct teaches them that a certain 

 kind of food, supplied to a grub inhabiting a certain dwelling, in a certain 

 position, will produce certain effects upon it, rendering it different from 

 what it would have been under ordinary circumstances, and fitted to answer 

 their peculiar wants. 



I trust that these arguments and probabilities will in some degree 

 reconcile you to what at first sight seems so extraordinary and extravagant 

 a doctrine. If not yet fully satisfied, I can only recommend your having 

 recourse to experiments yourself. Leaving you, therefore, to this best 

 mode of proof, I shall proceed to another part of my history : — but first 

 I must mention an experiment of Reaumur's which seems to come well 

 in here. To ascertain whether the expectation of a queen was sufficient 

 to keep alive the instinct and industry of the worker bees, he placed in 

 a glazed hive some royal cells containing both grubs and pupae, and then 

 introduced about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. These workers, 

 which had been deprived of their queen, at first destroyed some of the 

 grubs in these cells ; but they clustered around two that were covered 

 in, as if to impart warmth to the pupae they contained ; and on the follow- 

 ing day they began to work upon the portions of comb with which he 

 had supplied them, in order to fix and lengthen them. For two or three 

 days the work went on very leisurely, but afterwards their labors assumed 

 their usual character of indefatigable indusrry.^ There is no difficulty, 

 therefore, when a hive loses its sovereign, to supply the bees with an object 

 that will interest them, and keep their works in progress. 



There are a few other facts with respect to the larvae and pups of the 

 bees, which, before I enter upon the history of them in their perfect form, 

 I shall now detail to you. Sixteen days is the time assigned to a queen 

 for her existence in her preparatory states, before she is ready to emerge 

 from her cell. Three she remains in the egg ; when hatched she con- 

 tinues feeding five more ; when covered in she begins to spin her cocoon, 

 which occupies another day ; as if exhausted by this labor, she now 

 remains perfectly still for two days and sixteen hours ; and tlien assumes 

 the pupa, in which state she remains exactly four days and eight hours — 

 making in all the period I have just named. A longer time, by four days, 

 is required to bring the worJcers to perfection ; their preparatory states 

 occupying twenty days, and those of the male even twenty-four. The 

 former consumes half a day more than the queen in spinning its cocoon, — 



» Reaum. v. 271. 



